Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Dany, hero-worship your brother less,
he sucked. Also Jorah is getting more traitor-like all the time. Also
that is a lot of slaves to free.

The predictions from the old lady are
creepy. Beric talking about how fire consumes makes Melisandre's
theology not so winning. And her Creepy Jesus theology is creepy.
Jenny Oldstones might be the old lady's daughter or friend or even herself?

Bran + Meera = TWOO WUV, but srsly how
old are these people? I am very unclear whether this is puppy love or
true adult love.

Brienne as Jaime's salvation is sweet!
She is the knight he couldn't be, who keeps her vows and is motivated
by the proper things. And doesn't have ill-considered sexual relationships with siblings. Or sex with anyone, apparently.

Jeyne chasing Robb out seems obviously
about Jeyne wanting to do evil to him, like she needs to be there to help with the Freys' scheming, not her wanting to be with
him. I think she's in on whatever is coming.

Catelyn needs to get over Jon Snow being a bastard. It's been 16 years and approximately 30% of the
population of Westeros are bastards (given the frequency it comes up in the text!). She is too mature and too smart
to blame a baby for who its parents were or weren't. Also I think
she's too smart not to pick up on the fact that Ned is NOT REALLY THE
FATHER.

You know what wouldn't grow in a land
of multi-year summers? Fucking apples. Apples require 1000-1500 hours of
“chilling,” which is temperatures below freezing in winter to
bloom in spring. They simply wouldn't set blooms in a years-long
summer. And you know what would happen in a premodern society without
modern food preservation techniques with a years-long winter? Everyone would
die of fucking scurvy. [Kathryn: They never really describe how they
make it through winter.] GRRM says, Eat your vegetables or you'll
turn into a wight.

Hound: “Maybe we'll be in time for
your uncle's bloody wedding.” OH YOU THINK IT'LL BE BLOODY,
CHAPTER-ENDING SENTENCE? This is the second time GRRM has ended a
chapter with (off-the-cuff) predictions about Edmure's wedding ending
horribly. This wedding is going to end in death, death, death. (Maybe
I'm good at predicting things because like 90% of my communication is
sarcasm.)

Well that was horrifying. [Kathryn:
That's what they call the Red Wedding.] Goodness.

The first Westerosi lord to forbid
their army from drinking on duty will win the Game of Thrones, just
saying.

Wait, how did Balon Greyjoy die? Ugh,
it is hard to keep track.

Hero reborn in the sea – like Davos?

996 Lord Commanders of the Wall
properly recorded but they can't manage to keep track of how to kill
wights? “Obsidian knives” was too tricky?

Well now that Ygritte is separated from
Jon she's gonna fucking die.

GAAAAAH don't wave at eagles; if this
series has taught us one thing, it's not to wave at eagles.

In Bran's story Walder Frey is cursed
for slaying a guest … the Night King must figure somehow.

Benjen is not wholly dead. I don't
think he's ColdHands, who is older than Benjen, but maybe he is
similar? I'm not sure who or what ColdHands is, but then I guess we don't know a whole lot about the magic beyond the Wall yet.

OH BAM the black door gives me chills.

Ugh way to have incestuous sex on the
altar near your dead child, Jaime and Cersei, so creepy.

Sansa needs to stop using the word
“tummy” in her internal monologue as she is NOT FOUR.

This wedding chalice is Bad News.
[Kathryn: What makes you say that?] Tyrion says Joffrey can drown in
it; Sansa hopes he gets drunk and breaks his neck. There's also a
sword and a dagger and one other weapon, but the chalice gets like
five paragraphs and has all seven houses on it.

Ohhhh, I did not get that Joff killed
Bran. [He really is a loathesome little shit.] I feel like they are
spending a lot of time going over everyone who might want Joffrey
dead. But there was just a wedding slaughter like two chapters ago.
[Kathryn: Everyone airs grievances at weddings don't they?] No,
you're thinking of Festivus. [Kathryn: My bad.]

Ohhhhhhh Sir Loras is gay, for Renly
apparently; things make more sense now.

Lysa. Dude. Turn off your baby clock.
Have a little self respect.

Boy, Tyrion seems awfully sulky about a
14-year-old girl whose family was slaughtered by his not being in
love with him. [Kathryn: I mean kudos for not raping her but that
really only gets you so far.] Right. Sansa either plotted with
Margaery or is fleeing in the night or both. When the hell did Tommen
get here? [Why do you say that about Sansa?] Margaery's no innocent
and that Queen of Thorns is both hilarious and totally lacking in
scruples. I suppose it might be a Dornishman who was on the inside
but I think Margaery has to be in on it.

Cersei's accusation that Tyrion wanted
to be king seems over-the-top, but this is an exciting battle with
The Mountain. I keep confusing the first names of the Mountain and
the Hound, but that does not actually seem to matter a lot to the
narrative.

I'm sort-of nervous that Missandei will
betray Dany. Also that Barristan won't tell her secrets she needs to
know until it's too late.

SO CONVENIENT THAT THEY HAVE MEDIEVAL
PENICILLIN.

Man, apparently this is the book where
violent young women fail to kill men who need killin' (Dany, Arya;
Jorah, the Hound).

Harsh for Dontos but he was creepy. So
creepy.

Dany should have had Ser Jorah's head cut off; this will come
back to bite her in the ass.

I predict Jaime will eventually go to
the Wall (to fight, not take the Black).

Tywin does not have so many sons he
should be disowning them at this rate.

OH LOOK JON IS WISHING FOR A DRAGON OR
THREE TO DEFEND THE WALL. Maybe he eventually joins up with Dany so they can defeat the Others, in a veritable song of ice and fire!

Jon won't accept Winterfell from
Stannis.

Oh Shae you stupid bitch.

Melisandre should be less obviously
creepy; people would find her less off-putting and maybe she could
make more conversion progress. Her evangelism is less successful than it could be because she gives most people the creeps.

DID NOT EXPECT DEAD TYWIN. [Kathryn: I
KNOW RIGHT? But you kind-of did. You said Tyrion would bet against
his family and kill them.] Oh, that's right I did!

Whoa, Lady Lysa … bitches be crazy.

WHOA ALL THE TULLY BITCHES BE CRAZY.
ZOMBIE CATELYN ROCKS.

I have many important questions about
zombies. Zombies north of the wall just seem to be randomly
resurrected but zombies related to R'hellor require a priest and then
just, like, get up, regardless of deathiness. My current theory is that dead bodies north of the area that wights control get up regardless as long as their bodies aren't burned; zombies otherwise require someone to raise them specifically. I do not know who raised Catelyn, or if she was raised by the automatic encroaching magic creeping south of the Wall.

I am surprisingly glad that Lady Lysa got shoved out her moon door because she was a uniquely horrible person for such a minor character. Selfish, preening, detached from reality, at least a little mad, and a rotten mother. So much of this story is about mothers and mothering. The characters spend all their time talking about fathers and bastardy, but the story much more often hinges on mothers and mothering. Interesting.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Suspect Catelyn kills Jaime because she
threatens she will have his blood if he doesn't keep his oaths. He
won't keep them, she will kill him. But only after something really
terrible happens like all her arms get cut off or she thinks all her
children are dead, but obviously they're not; Arya, Sansa, and Bran
clearly have long story arcs ahead. But SOMEHOW disaster has to make
her magic so she can kill people. (Also she keeps having like
quasi-magical portents and visions.)

Surprised Robb and Joffrey survived
book II.

I hope Brienne gets to kill a lot of
people who annoy me. No one in particular, just characters who annoy
me.

10%

Neither Tyrion nor Jaime tried to kill
Bran; was it Varys?

Someone is getting their nose chopped
off at a wedding, since Tyrion made a point that one is more likely
to get one's nose chopped off in battle than at a wedding.

Davos turns on Stannis.

Rhaegar obviously found a prophecy when
he went to become a warrior.

Ugh, way rapey, Ser Jorah. You're one
of the three betrayers of Dany obvs. Ugh, ugh, ugh, so creepy.

20%

Jon's wolf that never makes noise will
later howl at a moment of great importance.

Catelyn talks about how she HAD five
children and now has three, which makes me think maybe three of them
survive the series – I predict Robb and Rickon as the dead ones.

Illyrio is funding Stannis, apparently?

Oh Robb. Oh Robb. Such bad life
decisions. GRRM did a nice job setting up Robb's failure to follow
through on the marriage contract. He made it both inevitable and
totally understandable that a 16-year-old would make such a dumb
mistake.

Cersei is only buying Sansa a new dress
to try to whore her out to someone. I mean maritally, not literal
whoring.

OH LOOK IT'S MY ZOMBIE ARMY! That was
quicker than I thought.

I think Tyrion is being set up to take
the fall for Littlefingers' shady accounting.

OH BAM SANSA AND TYRION WHAT DID I TELL
YOU? But I'm a little confused as to whether Cersei was in on it with
Tywin or whether Cersei had a different plan.

Is Jeyne working for Tywin? Robb's
honorable like his father, Jeyne will sleep her way to power like her
mother? But maybe not by seducing a king but sleeping with him to
betray him.

25%

The dreaming hag – shadow with a
burning heart butchering a golden stag is Stannis killing Renly. Man
without a face on a bridge, with a drowned crow … don't know. Woman
that was a fish, dead crying red tears – I think that's Catelyn,
crying for her dead children, and she's dead too … and then she
opens her eyes … ZOMBIE CATELYN? I just KNOW Catelyn is magic.
Maybe she is a magic zombie.

OMG DOES ZOMBIE CATELYN KILL JAIME?
THAT WOULD BE AWESOME.

Okay I am totally more into this series
now and getting wrapped up in it but when I stop to think about it
these plots are stalling out a bit and it's very Harry Potter and the
Neverending Camping Trip. Lots of following people
kidnapping/hostaging other people as they wander around. That's kinda
dull.

If there's going to be zombie Catelyn I
wonder if there will be zombie Robb. But probably zombies can't be
king, and also then what would zombie Catelyn be mad about?

30%

You know nothing, Jon Snow. Nothing
except how to pleasure a woman. Me, I just know how to say this one
sentence over and over and over. Why? If you don't already know I'm
not telling you, because you know nothing, Jon Snow.

Well Dany's obviously not going to sell
a dragon. Also “Missandei” is uncomfortably similar to
“Melisandre” in print, I keep misreading.

This section with Daenerys talking to
Ser Jorah about what a king is for and how Viserys should have
protected her is almost unbearably clunky and nonsensical. Dany's
passion for justice has been worked into the narrative and didn't
need to be called out for extra explication like that.

Hahahahaha, that was pretty sweet,
Daenerys 4 Lyfe. (Although that did not sound like a very realistic
description of a dude getting his head set on fire. Like, probably
you couldn't watch the individual eyeballs melt before the whole face
just melted.)

Where does the food for all these
Unsullied come from? I have concerns about supply chains in these
novels.

Knight of the Laughing Tree

Meera and Jojen wouldn't be all
“Haven't you heard this story a million times?” if it weren't
about Eddard himself and their father.

Four wolves – Eddard (quiet wolf),
his dead older brother (wild?), Lyanna, and his younger brother (the
pup – Benjen, right?). Which makes it Jojen and Meera's father
(Howland, I think) who is the crannogman who is the protagonist of
the story. And the dragon prince is Rhaegar, and maybe this is the
first time Lyanna and Rhaegar meet? That's probably the major purpose
of the story here, to put Rhaegar and Lyanna in one place, and give a
reason the Reeds are so loyal to the Starks.

Who is in the armor? Short, booming
voice, mismatched pieces, talented enough to beat knights. Probably
not the older brother Stark. Could be young Robert. Could be Howland
himself. Could be Lyanna? Could be Rhaegar if Rhaegar is short. I
think Benjen is probably too young.

47%

Melisandre's theology is going to run
into some serious problems when she meets Dany and Dany's whole
fire/light powers.

Why do fantasy novels always have such
long, long timelines? Ghiscar is 5,000 years old, Dorne is 3,000
years old. If this is timeline 1200-ish, 3,000 years before would be
2000 BCE and 5000 years would be 4000 BCE and basically humanity had
just discovered pottery, plows, and horse domestication. It's not
exactly a complaint, it's just a weird thing common to fantasy epics.
Thousands upon thousands of years and nobody discovers anything.

Okay, Stannis is TOTALLY NOT CREEPY
JESUS. Melisandre either just picked him because he's convenient and has a claim to the Westeros throne, or else she's super-bad at identifying Creepy Jesus (Azor Ahai).

Suspect Gendel's tunnels will come back
later on.

Beric Dondarrion is way more magic than
Stannis – okay now I'm farther along and he's been resurrected like 8 times, he is TOTALLY
more Creepy Jesus-y than Stannis.

Robb thinks about how Rollam and Ser
Reynald stand in the places of his brothers (Bran and Jon Snow),
which makes me think both of them will die since he thinks his
brothers (Bran and Rickon) are dead. The chapter ends with Edmure
reluctantly agreeing to the wedding (literally the last line) so
obviously this wedding is going to shit. People don't do things in the last line of chapters in this series unless it's about to go REALLY IRONICALLY BADLY.

Dornish/Cornish whatever don't be
afraid to put a lampshade on it GRRM.

Oh man suddenly there is a lot of
exposition and it's getting dull. Jaime's being sent here and there
for Reasons explained at length. Tyrion is thinking Thoughts about
Oberyn. Arya is off this way and that way with many different
outlaws. Shifting gears, I guess, as some plot lines begin to run
down and others have to get started. I've lost track of which group
of miscreants is running around with Ary, but it probably doesn't
matter as so far nobody has expressed any interest in return her to
Catelyn.

UGH WHY ARE THERE SO MANY CHARACTERS
THIS IS LIKE WAR AND PEACE. SIMILAR QUANTITIES OF WINTER, EVEN. If "Gapoleon" invades I quit. SRS.

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

I've been back and forth several times about how to do this, since making predictions based on foreshadowing given to the reader in a novel is a totally different task than making predictions based on prophecies and visions given to the characters within the novel. There's too much stuff in here to ignore, but it's hard to tell which of it is for US to take seriously and which is for DANY to take seriously. Anyway, here goes:

Dany in the
House of the Undying

(Which I keep typing as undrying)

Naked woman with tiny rat-men: Just
gross, GRRM

Feast of corpses. A dead man on a
throne with the head of a wolf, wearing an iron crown. This is a
Stark (wolf head), probably Robb (iron crown = King in the North),
who is struck dead at the moment of his triumph (the feast). Sounds
like a lot of other people get to die too.

Dead dragons, iron throne, old man with
silver hair, “Let him be king over charred bones and cooked meat.
Let him be the king of ashes.” Probably Mad King Areys? It's a
Targaryen, but the dragons are dead, and he seems to have just lost
the war, so probably him.

A Targaryen, taller than Viserys, dark
blue eyes, who plays a lap harp; a woman with a newborn baby, naming
him “Aegon” to be a king. “He is the prince that was promised,
and his is the song of ice and fire.” – BOO YA, Jon Snow, aka
Aegon, son of Rhaegar and Lyanna, you have the ice of the wall AND
the fire of dragons, cool song, bro.

(Continuing): “There must be one
more. The dragon has three heads.” – Daenerys, Jon/Aegon, and …?

I think GRRM doesn't give us a physical
description of the nursing woman here because it would make it too
obvious she was a Stark rather than whoever Rhaegar was supposed to
be married to.

Pyat Pree trying to lure her
off-course, warlocks in splendor: Rather obvious to the reader,
really, but Dany sees through lies

Child of three: Irregular parentage is
a theme – mother, father, and someone who saved her? Mother,
father, and dragons?

Three fires: Life, death, love – my
initial thought was the funeral pyre that births the dragons, the
fire that melts the gold that kills Viserys, and something to come.
But then the House of the Undying burns down shortly after, so maybe
THAT is the deathfire. And then the funeral pyre is life (dragons),
death (Drogo), AND love … so I withdraw all current predictions
about the three fires and award GRRM a “Sneaky prophecy, sir!”

Three mounts: bed, dread, love –
probably men: Khal Drogo, Viserys, and someone else that I think
we're supposed to think will be Ser Jorah but probably isn't. But
possibly the mounts could be both men AND animals like horses and
dragons.

Three treasons: blood, gold, love –
blood is either Mirri or her brother, I'd think. I don't think we've
seen gold or love yet. Strongly suspect Ser Jorah of being the one for love.

Dying man in the water with rubies:
Rhaegar

Blue-eyed king who cast no shadow:
Stannis and his creepy religion with no shadows

Cloth dragon: a false Targaryen? A
failed one?

Mother of dragons, slayer of lies:
Daenerys will somehow reveal a lot of these falsehoods. Stannis and
the “Cloth Dragon” are both false in some way.

Silver horse to a darkling stream

Corpse in the prow of a ship – Dunno,
but that doesn't sound like it's going to work out for you, dead dude (greyjoy? grey lips smiling? too obvious a pun?)

Blue rose in a wall of ice

“Bride of Death” – since these
things come in three, are all three of these husbands of Daenerys who
die? Khal Drogo (silver horse), maybe a Greyjoy (grey lips smiling)
on a ship, and Jon Snow (blue rose = Lyanna) The blue rose is
referenced several times in quick succession as being a flower that
only grows in the North/Winterfell. It grows from a “chink in the
wall of ice” so she's from the North, and maybe foreshadows the
coming supernatural onslaught from the North? (a crack in the armor) One of my first
suspicions/predictions was that Jon would marry Daenerys to unite the kingdom so
that would sort-of please me except for all the endeadenating of Jon.

Mother of dragons, bride of fire:
Lyanna? Or Danerys? Literal dragons or Targaryen dragons? Lyanna
would be the mother of a Targaryen dragon and the bride of southern
(Targaryen) fire, making Aegon/Jon the prince with the song of ice
and fire. But perhaps it's Danerys, the mother of dragons (literal)
and bride of fire (different metaphor).

Little girl/red door and following:
Daenerys's free city childhood, time with the Dothraki, etc. But the
white lion could have something to do with the Lannisters. Always be
suspicious of animal symbols.

Ten thousand slaves calling “Mother!”
– Daenerys frees some slaves, I guess. Good place to get an army.

Ygritte tells Jon Bael the Bard

Ygritte tells the story to make the
point that the Starks are half-wildling.

Other notes from the story's resonances with the present:

One of the 8 billion Lords Bran –
Bran will become (at least technically) Lord Stark because Robb will
die

The crypt is a stronghold of true
Starks; a truer stronghold than Winterfell itself – search that
fucker when you're the boss of Winterfell

The blue winter rose stands for Starks,
especially Stark women. In Daenerys's visions, it is Lyanna.

Bastards can be Lords in Winterfell,
and leaders.

Irregular family relations only end in
tragedy.

When Jon lets Ygritte go, he will
probably later join the wildlings, as he seems to be implicitly
accepting her point that Starks are half-wildling.

This is the first time Jon questions
his parentage w/r/t his FATHER. WAY TO GET THE MEMO GENIUS.

There's been a lot in this book about
the Wall dividing humans north and south of it, how often those
humans intermingle and how the Wall is an artificial divider among
men. The Starks are the key to the Wall, and I think another
point here is that they in some fashion bestride the Wall, the realms
of mundane and magic, wildling and civilization, etc. Winterfell is a
very liminal place generally in GoT so far, a nation within a nation,
wilder than the South but more civilized than the North, owing
allegiance to men and things other than men (the Wall), worshiping
different Gods, and so on.

My very theological self wants to say
that the fact that Bael takes the kingsroad to Winterfell shows how
the structures of civilization itself allow the incursion of
wildness, but probably I'm getting overexcited here.

Following on a comment from a friend about how I am observant in interpreting
the myths and songs as about the current story:

Yeah, Ygritte's storytelling was clearly
just about setting up "types" for the current generation to
fulfill. [explain.] There is this whole genre of bible study,
"typology." It's all about interpreting Old Testament
stories and prophecies as prefiguring Christ. [Various examples given,
use your Googles. Isaac overthrowing the older brother Ishmael is a
"type" for Christ overthrowing the Old Covenant. It's relatively
out-of-fashion these days, partly because it lacks deep engagement with
what the texts actually say in favor of forced parallels to a particular
theology, but it's profoundly influential on Christian theology and
Biblical interpretation as a whole, even when you'd rather ignore it.]

Anyway, whenever people in fantasy books
tell old stories and legends it is almost always for the sole purpose
of doing typology (or giving an unfulfilled prophecy for someone to
fulfill). See, for example, all the prefaces in
The Belgariad. Tolkein and CS Lewis were both
SUPER-typological in their understanding of the Gospels, and they
both wrote fantasy epics with the Gospels in mind. Both of them used
past history in
their epics to prefigure the heroism of the hero. Presumably that's how
fantasy turns
typology into such a trope, above and beyond the part where you
don't tell past stories unless they're relevant to your present
novel. Someone should pull a thesis or two out of this: Do the
typological tendencies of SFF enter the genre primarily via imitation of
Tolkein and Lewis, or are there other vectors? Is SFF in other
western languages as fully typological as in English?

More direct commentary this time as I get more involved with the characters!

A Clash of Kings

Predictions:

As a general thing, I expect a plague.
Maybe not in this volume but they've mentioned illnesses a couple of
times in passing in a way that seems important, and GRRM seems to be
building towards maximum chaos before introducing the supernatural
winter threats.

I have a mental block on the title of this book and have to look it up every time.

I was texting my predictions as I read along, or sometimes chatting online as I read. My general comments on the story become more numerous as I go. (Reading on a kindle so I give %s, not page #s. I thought later about labeling by specific chapters but, man, this is for fun, that seems like homework!)

A Game of Thrones

End of First Chapter

Big giant signpost in the form of a
dead direwolf with five normal pups and one creepy albino pup, killed
by a stag, which is obviously Ned and (a few pages later) obviously
the Baratheons. NOTE TO READERS: NED GONNA DIE.

I read a very little bit of Game of Thrones when
it first came out, the very first book ... less than 10% of it. I stopped
because a) it was too rapey; b) the female characters weren't very
realistic; and c) I haaaaaaaaate novels that switch POV all the time.
The sum totally of what I remember from the book is a little kid gets
thrown off a tower for something to do with incest, and the big
important castle is built on a hotspring even though it's like always
winter and never Christmas at it.

I forgot about it until it started getting bit in pop culture. I
resisted reading or watching it, because it sounded extremely violent
(which isn't my thing) and because I'm awfully tired of grimdark fantasy
(although I really GRRM and GoT were among the progenitors of the
sub-genre). But finally I got tired of being left out of nerd-chat and
gave in. I knew it was supposed to have many shocking and unforeseen
twists, so when I read the very first chapter, I texted one of my nerd
friends (Kathryn) and said, "Ned's gonna die, right? Is that the
shocking twist that everyone's always complaining about?" This turned
into a game where I texted her (and then some of my other friends, and
then posted on facebook) my predictions as I read through the books.
I've compiled the texts from the first two books into the following posts
(adding in timeline as best I could afterwards; it's a bit messy), and
then started keeping a better log going forward. I'm putting all my
prediction and commentary together on this page, and will be posting
additions to my blog as well as adding them to the master page.

Where I was texting my comments I have edited them for clarity and flow
(taken out the text-speech, turned things into actual sentences).
Wherever you see something in [square brackets], that was a comment from
whomever I was talking to, most often Kathryn, and sometimes Mike or
Carmen or other friendly nerds. Generally I've edited their comment to
the most direct question -- sometimes because I no longer have that part
of the conversation, other times because we were also, at the same
time, discussing baby poop.